God's Dwelling Place

For the past month or two, I have been kinda struggling with some ungreatfulness. Though Tim has a job and is bringing in income for us, things are still getting tight due to sales being so low the past several months. So we've been feeling the economic downfall to a degree.
Well, whoever is reading this, might remember a year and a half ago, when we moved into this house, how incredibly excited we were and how we thought this house was way more than anything we ever could have dreamed of hoped for. We couldn't stop talking about it for months. And don't get me wrong, I still love my house, but have been a getting really impatient about the things that we want to do in it to fix it up better to be even more pleasurable. And ever since money has started getting tighter and tighter, I started seeing more and more things I wished I could do to polish things up a bit so to speak. It needs new windows badly, there's still 3 rooms that I want to paint, we want to have hard floors in the main living areas, new patio, the list goes on.
Well, as I was focusing on these things so much, I began to almost dislike my house to a degree and had completely forgotten how much this house meant to us when we first moved in and the fact that it is still the same house and that it still has some of the wonderful qualities about it that drew us to it in the first place. It was "perfect" for us in our minds back then.

Well, the Lord as been speaking to me lately about the meaning of my name. Bethany means "dwelling place of God". And I"ve grown to love that meaning more and more as I've realized the reality that God dwells within my heart and that I am a "dwelling place of God". I was confessing to him last week about my ungratefullness toward this house and all the complaining I've been doing about all the things I wish I could do right now to fix it up more. It's definitely not a perfect house. No house is, and it needs quite a bit of work in areas. But nonetheless, it has still been very functional and has provided our needs to function as a family and then some.

I've also been having a hard time with focusing only my sin in my life lately, and how i can't get it together in the areas I know I need work on. And it's been dragging me down a lot and I have been confessing that as well.

God then spoke right to my heart. He said "Bethany, when you were created, I saw a perfect child, and saw your potential, and only saw the good in you, and to this day, that is still all that I see. When I began to dwell in your heart, I said 'Wow! Look at what I have created! This is amazing'! And that has not changed. You are being used for My purposes and are very much fulfilling the call in your life, whether you can see it or not. And I find pleasure in dwelling within your heart, for that is what I created you for."

And that my friends, is how he wants me to dwell also in my own home. When I look to see what has accomplished in this house and in our lives over the past year and a half (not material things), all I can say is "Wow! God is really at work in our lives, in this home, and this house has been nothing less than a blessing to us thus far". It may have a some flaws, but He is still blessing us in this home and will continue to do so, and will fulfill His purposes, and that is what is important. Thank you, Jesus,, for what you have done and what you will do in this home and in my heart. We have only just begun.

"In him you are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit"...Ephesians 2:22